Flashing bricked BIOS chip

[Fjantom]

Hi, recently bricked my motherboard through aborted BIOS update, and am asking for help with figuring out if flashing the BIOS chip is feasible on my own, and if so, what hardware I need and if I need to desolder it or not. From what I've found already it should be theoretically possible through the SPI pins already present on the board next to the chip and using a Raspberry Pi I have on hand. The only video on youtube I've found of someone attempting something similar, however, encounters a problem with other connected components and decides to desolder the chip anyway and flash directly to it. Anyone else have any experience with this? Would obviously prefer not having to do any soldering and not having to buy any extra hardware.

 

Another potential problem is that the BIOS file the motherboard manufacturer provides is a CAP, and flashrom which I would be using AFAIK only accepts bin files. I've found a few things to read about this, most of which fly over my head, anyone who could explain what to do with this?

 

The motherboard is a ROG Strix B450-F Gaming. I have a new one coming so if this is too cumbersome it's not that big of a deal, just a way to save some money by repairing and selling the old one. Attached is a picture of the BIOS chip and SPI pins in question.

[WereCatf]

10 minutes ago, Fjantom said:

however, encounters a problem with other connected components and decides to desolder the chip anyway and flash directly to it

You quite typically do have to do that, yes. There's no way of powering up just the chip itself, if it's connected to the mobo -- as soon as you apply power, that power will spread to several other parts on the mobo as well, quite often resulting in either dips in voltage, ruining the attempts at trying communicating with the chip, or some other component may end up being powered-up and trying to access the chip, ruining the attempt.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, WereCatf said:

You quite typically do have to do that, yes. There's no way of powering up just the chip itself, if it's connected to the mobo -- as soon as you apply power, that power will spread to several other parts on the mobo as well, quite often resulting in either dips in voltage, ruining the attempts at trying communicating with the chip, or some other component may end up being powered-up and trying to access the chip, ruining the attempt.

If you have a programmer, you just need to power on the board and that powers the bios chip and you can flash the bios.

 

Alternatively, to recover an Asus motherboard bios, you put the motherboard disk in and select bios recovery. This will install the factory shipped bios, so be sure to have a 200ge around to flash and post the board. 

[WereCatf]

6 minutes ago, ShrimpBrime said:

If you have a programmer, you just need to power on the board and that powers the bios chip and you can flash the bios.

Nope, has not worked on any PC I've flashed. I've always had to desolder the chip for it to work correctly.

[Selle]

Have yo tried to do a bios recovery? Look in the manual under «3.11.3 ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3»

[Fjantom]

1 hour ago, Selle said:

Have yo tried to do a bios recovery? Look in the manual under «3.11.3 ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3»

I get no output, with or without a USB drive with BIOS file on it, never get into ezflash. Maybe it's because I have a 3000 cpu and the BIOS I updated from originally didn't support it yet?

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Fjantom said:

I get no output, with or without a USB drive with BIOS file on it, never get into ezflash. Maybe it's because I have a 3000 cpu and the BIOS I updated from originally didn't support it yet?

remove the hard drives and install a DVD reader and insert the motherboard disk. The system will post from the disk. Select bios recovery option and proceed. 

 

Source: https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1012219/

 

Quoted section from link above__

 

The first method: use the motherboard support DVD to recover the BIOS：

Note: The BIOS version on the motherboard support DVD may be older than the BIOS version on the official website. If you want to use the latest BIOS version, please download it from the ASUS Download Center and use the USB flash drive recovery method to update.

1. After booting, turn on the optical drive and insert the motherboard support DVD.

 

2. Restart the computer (press the keyboard: ctrl + alt + delete key at the same time), it will automatically enter the "EZ Flash 3" BIOS update interface.

For example: Prime X299 Edition 30 models, the message WARNING! BIOS Recovery mode has been detected is displayed as follows, you can refer to the "X299E3.CAP" name in the error message as the update option (you can use the keyboard or mouse to click)

 

3. When the progress bar finishes updating, a prompt indicating that the update is successful will be displayed. Click OK and the computer will restart.

 

4. After the system restarts, you will be asked to press the <F1> button to enter the BIOS setup.

 

5. It is recommended that you follow the steps below to restore the default BIOS settings to avoid system instability caused by incorrect BIOS settings.

(Ex: Prime X299 Edition 30 model)

-> In the BIOS screen, press the keyboard F5

 

-> "Load Optimized Defaults" appears, click OK

 

 

/quote

[Fjantom]

7 hours ago, ShrimpBrime said:

remove the hard drives and install a DVD reader and insert the motherboard disk. The system will post from the disk. Select bios recovery option and proceed. 

 

Source: https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1012219/

 

Quoted section from link above__

 

The first method: use the motherboard support DVD to recover the BIOS：

Note: The BIOS version on the motherboard support DVD may be older than the BIOS version on the official website. If you want to use the latest BIOS version, please download it from the ASUS Download Center and use the USB flash drive recovery method to update.

1. After booting, turn on the optical drive and insert the motherboard support DVD.

 

2. Restart the computer (press the keyboard: ctrl + alt + delete key at the same time), it will automatically enter the "EZ Flash 3" BIOS update interface.

For example: Prime X299 Edition 30 models, the message WARNING! BIOS Recovery mode has been detected is displayed as follows, you can refer to the "X299E3.CAP" name in the error message as the update option (you can use the keyboard or mouse to click)

 

3. When the progress bar finishes updating, a prompt indicating that the update is successful will be displayed. Click OK and the computer will restart.

 

4. After the system restarts, you will be asked to press the <F1> button to enter the BIOS setup.

 

5. It is recommended that you follow the steps below to restore the default BIOS settings to avoid system instability caused by incorrect BIOS settings.

(Ex: Prime X299 Edition 30 model)

-> In the BIOS screen, press the keyboard F5

 

-> "Load Optimized Defaults" appears, click OK

 

 

/quote

The solution you are describing requires you to actually get to the BIOS recovery mode screen, which I can't. The PC is completely unresponsive to the CTRL+ALT+DEL shortcut.

 

Some information about the state of my system:

The reason I started the BIOS update in the first place is that the motherboard showed a DRAM error boot LED when I tried to boot with my new 3000 series cpu. This LED is still lit up when booting, and the CPU fan does not spin. Both ram and cpu have been tested in another system, they are working fine.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Fjantom said:

The solution you are describing requires you to actually get to the BIOS recovery mode screen, which I can't. The PC is completely unresponsive to the CTRL+ALT+DEL shortcut.

 

Some information about the state of my system:

The reason I started the BIOS update in the first place is that the motherboard showed a DRAM error boot LED when I tried to boot with my new 3000 series cpu. This LED is still lit up when booting, and the CPU fan does not spin. Both ram and cpu have been tested in another system, they are working fine.

You do not need to access bios.

The disk has it's own bios rom the board will boot from.

You literally boot from the disk, not the board.

I have done this method on several occasions. It only works when you have a bad flash with a working board.

First learned about it when I had a bad flash on an Asus M3A (yes that's the entire part number) That was back in 08'.

[Fjantom]

9 hours ago, ShrimpBrime said:

You do not need to access bios.

The disk has it's own bios rom the board will boot from.

You literally boot from the disk, not the board.

I have done this method on several occasions. It only works when you have a bad flash with a working board.

First learned about it when I had a bad flash on an Asus M3A (yes that's the entire part number) That was back in 08'.

Either way it hasn't worked for me now, whether I use a usb stick or a usb disk drive, zero video either way. I don't have an internal disk drive on hand so can't try that. Thanks for the help anyway